My Process

A repeatable process is critical to the success of any user experience project. Rooted in the idea that people respond to and remain loyal to products that meet their needs and delight them along the way, my process starts with Empathy and Discovery to ensure the highest rate of success.

Empathize

The first phase of a project requires an understanding of the problem at hand. By empathizing with my users and business partners, I can identify what actions the team needs to take to create a truly meaningful solution.

Activities:

Contextual inquiry

Stakeholder interviews

User interviews

User testing

User validation

Discover

Building upon Empathize, my discovery phase seeks to uncover the "whats" of the project. What exists today, what do people do, what are people feeling and doing. Performing some discovery activities gives me a baseline to measure the project's success.

Activities:

Design thinking workshops

Analytics analysis

Competitive analysis

Affinity diagramming

Card sorting

Heuristic Analysis

Site taxonomy

Ideate

This phase is a lot of fun. Ideating is where the initial concepts and ideas start to form. I prefer to work with my Agile or business teams while gathering ideas so that a variety of perspectives are included in the process.

Activities:

Sketching

Whiteboard sessions

Design workshops

Wireframing

Concepting

User validation

Task flows

Create

The create phase is where things start to become real. The team starts defining user stories, interpreting the brand visual style, and prototyping ideas for review, builds, and testing.

Activities:

Interactive prototyping

Mood boards

Design

Style guides

Hi-fidelity prototypes

Rapid prototyping

Interaction design

Iterate

By its nature, Agile UX requires experimentation and regular releases. If my team and I find a better solution, we work it into a Sprint for development. Iteration means we remain flexible, experimental, and creative to adapt to changing technology and user needs.